


Tend Upon the Hours and the Times of Your Desire

by Breath4Soul



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Endless love - Freeform, Falling In Love, Fits in cannon but with AU past, John Watson is a Saint, Kind of AU, M/M, Nothing but time, Shakespearean Sonnets, sherlock is immortal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2018-10-31 09:30:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10896519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breath4Soul/pseuds/Breath4Soul
Summary: Sherlock has a secret. He waits for John. He always has. There is a truth about John Watson that even John doesn't  know and it will change everything.Inspired by a pin on Pinterest that said “Imagine an immortal that had all these photos of people that had been their friends and loved ones and had passed away over their lifetime.”Also inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnet 57:Being your slave, what should I do but tendUpon the hours and times of your desire?I have no precious time at all to spend,Nor services to do, till you require.Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hourWhilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,Nor think the bitterness of absence sourWhen you have bid your servant once adieu;Nor dare I question with my jealous thoughtWhere you may be, or your affairs suppose,But, like a sad slave, stay and think of noughtSave, where you are how happy you make those.So true a fool is love that in your will,Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.





	1. So True a Fool

“What the hell is this?” John’s voice is tight and steady but the photo in his hand trembles as he holds it out towards Sherlock. He is sitting on the edge of Sherlock’s bed. 

Sherlock blinks and shifts, his eyes darting from the stormy blue of John’s stare to the photos on the wall behind John. 

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Sherlock says placing his hands on his hips as his face slides to something guarded. He looks towards the door, grasping for a distraction. “I am thinking we will go to Angelo’s for dinner. We haven’t been by in five months and he tends to-”

“Sherlock!” John’s voice cracks through the air, sharp and frayed at the ends, and Sherlock’s eyes snap to him instantly. It has been some time since Sherlock has seen him _this_ angry. John’s jaw is set and he is leaning forward. “We said no more secrets. This - this is… _what_ …?” John is fuming; confusion tinted with fear colouring his face.

Sherlock sighs and closes his eyes a second longer to sort his thoughts. His head bows and his hand rubs against the back of his neck. There is nothing for it but the truth now. He just has to hope they have been through enough that John can handle it.

“I am…” Sherlock lifts his eyes to John briefly, then slides them away, feeling the sting of the open hurt and disappointment in their depths. “It was not my intention to keep this from you forever but… it is… _complex._ ” He strides over to the wall that has photographs, news clippings and sketches pinned to it in that controlled chaos that helps make connections and unravel riddles for Sherlock's mind. 

He still feels frustratingly far from any resolution to the problem there. He glances down at the large, framed poster of the periodic table that previously covered the melange of evidence in Sherlock’s longest running case. It lies askew on the floor, the frame broken and the glass shattered. There is a hole in the plaster where the screw it hung upon tore away under its weight. The noise of the frame crashing to the floor is undoubtedly what brought John into his room.

Sherlock looks back at John as his hands once again come to rest on his hips. John is staring at the photo in his hand again, eyes searching it feverenty for some sign the astounding truth, that he is just starting to suspect, is not real. 

Sherlock is hyperaware that John is sitting on his bed and has never done that before. It should _not_ be a distraction because it is, no doubt, only due to John's inability to trust his own legs at the moment, yet... in another context… under different circumstances… in another life…

“But this is… this is _you._ ” John says managing to rise to his feet to thrust the photograph towards Sherlock. 

Sherlock looks down at it, then turns away towards the wall again. He knows every smallest detail of that photo. He has spent many an hour gazing at it. He knows his own face is smooth and impassive, as always, eyes a practised blank. He is seated with his legs crossed in his fine, Victorian attire. However, it is the man stood behind him that Sherlock’s eyes are inevitably drawn to. The tilt of the man’s mustache betrays a familiar smirk, the lively glint in his eyes is evident even in the grainy, sienna toned tintype. The man’s strong, gentle hand is curled around Sherlock’s shoulder. He can still feel it at times; the subtle pressure, the reassurance, the protectiveness, the slightest bit of possessiveness in that touch. It had made his heart flutter in his chest. It still does.

“Yes and… no, I did not drug you and take you to some reenactment… that man that resembles you is, in fact, _you._ The photograph is authentic Victorian era.” Sherlock glances at John, whose eyes have gone glazed and distant in shock.

John sits down again with a thump that gives the impression it was not quite voluntary. “No… but… that’s _impossible._ ”

Sherlock runs restless fingers through his hair, anxiety tickling at his insides. “One would assume that to be so, yet, that would be denying the evidence right before your eyes. So, _importable,_ yes but, it seems, _not impossible.”_

Sherlock lightly runs his fingers over a more recent photo of the two of them clipped from the paper.

“I did not find you in my first life. What they now call ancient Rome… Social status did nothing to spare you dying in the street from a stab wound in those days. You… well, it wasn’t you, precisely… but the you that belonged to that time… I later learned your name was Justus.” Sherlock smiles to himself. “Seemed as appropriate then as it does now. Sherlock looks back at the wall and straightens a photo from the early 1900s. 

“Maybe we had met in passing. At the baths or some celebration. I don’t know… I was not a _good_ man… but you, you were a soldier then too… that never changes… Always a soldier and some form of healer. I thought for some time that, perhaps, it was a medicine you - Roman you - Justus - concocted… but the truth leaves something to be desired in the realm of scientific believability… I have come to the theory that immortality was yours before that day and you somehow… for reasons I will never know… chose to surrender it - or share the purest form of it - with me. It is the only theory I am unable to discount.” Sherlock fiddles with a pin on the wall, centuries worth of guilt swelling in his chest and making it hard to breathe. He clears his throat and presses on.  

“My last vision before I died that first time was you arriving by my side as I bled out… cradling me to your chest with a look like… like the sun had fallen from the sky.” Sherlock risks a glance at John. John's mouth is agape like he wants to say something but can’t. He snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head back and forth.

“When I awoke we were in… well, it must have been your bed chamber. I was…” Sherlock closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath. “Your arm was on my chest over where my wound had been but… the positioning was as if you’d collapsed from kneeling beside me… I was covered in your blood. As if you had-” Sherlock makes a motion; miming slitting his wrist then turning it down so the blood would pour out. “You were dead. I… I was confused- young- had never seen death so close and… admittedly, I panicked and fled. I told no one of the incident… I watched the death rituals for your from afar. And after that day, I discovered that precisely fifty seven minutes after I am clinically dead I rise again.” 

“No… Sherlock… That’s just-” John breathes, his words coming out in halting barks. Sherlock looks up at him and his heart aches at the lost look in his eyes, the disbelief appearing to war against something deep down inside him that always suspected _something._ Sherlock squares his shoulders to John and straightens his spine, facing the truth full on.

“The jump from Bart’s was not a trick, John. It was exactly as it appeared. I died. Yet, I am unable to remain so. I have no regard for my own transport because no amount of abuse will ever prove fatal to this body. I am trapped in this form…for better or worse… perhaps unto the end of the universe itself. Ageless, unable to wear the scars of this existence on my flesh, but you-” Sherlock stops, watching John stare at him, his face too shocked to display the internal struggle inside him to take in this information and rearrange everything he thought he knew. He moves to the bed and sits down next to John.

“I am a constant… but you, John, you are a mystery - an anomaly. Anchored in time. You live, die and are reborn…Your-” Sherlock bulks at the only words offered up by his mind; _spirit or soul._ He brushes the fight for logic against such un-quantifiable notions aside and shifts his approach.

“Generally, your name is not the same, of course. Similar, but different. Your body, though similar, is a product of your parentage as well, but it is undoubtedly _you._ A soldier, a healer; you find me and are driven to protect me.” Sherlock stops short of explaining all the other ways he knows John is Justus and all the other iterations of that man; the way he smiles, the pure joy in his laughs, the spark in his eyes that reaches out and sings on every nerve in Sherlock's body. 

Sherlock takes a deep, trembling breath. He can feel the vibration of John’s energy, the heat of his body. He looks at John’s hand and wants to to grasp it, but resists the urge. They have not done _this._ John has not expressed an interest in that sort of intimacy, as other versions had. That was something Sherlock had at first welcomed because the loss of John in the Victorian era (his name had been John Watson then too) had nearly broken Sherlock. 

“I have tried to find you earlier in your life. It seems our paths cannot cross before you are 26. I have tried to avoid you because…” Sherlock looks away, his insides rattling with the memories. His eyes are drawn back at John. “You always find me. It seems like a random happenstance to you but it is like magnetism, an invisible force acting in powerful ways that we only know exists by the inevitable results.” 

“I don’t - I don’t remember any of this.” John gestures at the photo in his other hand and then the clippings. “It can’t - I don’t think-” 

“No. You never remember, as far as I have deduced.” Sherlock sighs. He has often wondered if it is a small mercy for John to forget the truth and only be driven forward by what seems like his own internal compulsions. Sherlock is cursed by memories. Too many memories. A vast accumulation of devastating failures and glorious successes with John that forever haunt him. 

“This is only the second time I have told you. The last time…” Sherlock gives in to the need and reaches out, gently curling his hand, with all due caution, around the top of John’s hand that is resting on his thigh. John’s eyes widen and he looks down at their hands then up at Sherlock. 

“John, I have watched you die more times than I wish to count. Always for me. You sacrifice yourself, no matter how much I try-” Sherlock’s voice breaks and he closes his eyes a moment to pull himself together and muster his courage for this painful truth. He opens his eyes and studies John carefully.

“Living without you is hell… I… can't… I don’t think I am _meant to,_ really.” Sherlock observes John, hoping his words are conveying the meaning he needs them to now. He desperately wants to keep John a bit longer. “I know you will leave me… One way or another… All I can do is wait… I wait, for you to come… to leave… to return… to leave again… I wait, in the knowledge - the hope anyways - that there will always be this. _Always you. Always me. Always the two of us against the world.”_

John’s brow furrows and he looks down. He slowly places the photo beside himself on the bed then turns more fully towards Sherlock, turning his hand in Sherlock’s grasp so they are palm to palm. When he lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s, they are determined. 

“Then, let’s not waste anymore time waiting,” John says firmly and he leans forward, his hand wrapping around the back of Sherlock’s head as Justus's had as he took his last gasps that first time. Sherlock lets out a breath he’d been holding for centuries as their lips slide together and the world, at last, is as it _was_ \- as it ever _should be._


	2. Precious Time

Sherlock’s hands are hungry, moving over John eagerly, fingers adeptly popping buttons on his shirt as his lips slide, pull, press. 

Every nerve is singing. Desire is a raging flood overflowing the banks and forcing everything around it to yield beneath its quest for release. He is pressing into John feverently with all the pent-up passion it has been difficult to conceal since they met at Bart’s - since centuries before that. The rightness of at last having John in his arms is humming in his bones. 

John's hands flail momentarily, grasping at air, before settling on Sherlock’s shoulders. He is trying to talk, but Sherlock's tongue flickers in a feather-light sweep against his lips. Then he gives a forceful prod in that way that always made _Victorian Watson_ growl and go pliant. It makes John gasp, choking on his muffled words, and Sherlock plunges in, plundering his mouth. Their tongues tangle. That is a bit like Medieval John, _Jehoichin,_ and the way there was a constant battle in their fervent encounters. It is all familiar, yet John is unique. Like a new flavour of chocolate with subtle variation that makes what is enjoyable even more appealing for its distinctness.

“Christ-” John gasps, breaking away. His chest is heaving against Sherlock's palm as he drags at the air in big gulps of breath. Sherlock’s seizes the opportunity to slide lips over John’s chin and nip at the line of his jaw, then throat. John makes a strangled sound, fingers flexing into the meat of Sherlock's shoulders.

Sherlock is fiercely determined to learn all the spots that drive John, _this John,_ mad. It is like that desperate, raging inferno of discovery during puberty when the body first awakens to itself and the pleasure it can give and take. He is unfocused, clumsy and aggressive with his untempered want as his hands persist in their assault on John's buttons. He is unable to prevent them from straying from their task to sweep over John’s chest and arms, mapping everything. 

“Christ, Sherlock, just-” John pushes against Sherlock‘s shoulders and Sherlock resists. His mouth latches onto John's collar bone and sucks. He has waited so long, _so bloody long,_ for this. Now John has come back to him, _fully._ He will crawl out of his own skin if he can’t get naked beneath the man in the next thirty seconds. John needs to touch him, touch him _now,_ or he might explode. 

“Can we just-”

“No!” Sherlock lunges forward, roughly forcing John back to the mattress and curling around him bodily. His mouth moves to below John's ear to lathe his tongue along the taut muscles of his neck. His hands are not steady enough to deal with the buttons on John’s shirt. _When did he start shaking so violently?_ He gives up and yanks. He will buy him a new bloody shirt. A thousand shirts. He has no want for money. When you have lasted thousands of years, it is remarkably easy to set up substantial means of financial security. He could live quite opulently if he so chose, but he’d found centuries ago that being rich was rather… _boring._ Justus was not born to riches and never seemed to enjoy it once the novelty wore off. 

“For fuck’s sake, Sherlock.” John grabs Sherlock by the waist and throws him back. There is a brief tussle and then John ends up on top of him, straddling his waist and pinning his hands to the bed at either side of his head. John’s face is intense, his jaw clenched and his eyes stern. 

It is _exquisite._

Sherlock loves it when John shows his more assertive side, though it has never come to that on their ‘first time.’ He always starts out so careful and tender as if Sherlock is a virgin - as if their bodies weren’t cosmicly designed to fit together. 

“Just settle down a moment,” John growls, briefly pushing down more forcefully on Sherlock’s wrists to assert himself. His shirt is hanging open and Sherlock can see all the tensed muscle of his bare chest and abdomen. It is unbearable torture to not be able to touch, to taste. He flexes his hands open and closed above John’s hold.

“Don’t tease me,” Sherlock warns. “You have no idea, John... **_No_... Idea.** ” He had nearly given up this time around. He had considered that it was highly probable that they would never get to this point and it would be another century of waiting before he had a chance to make it right. It was excruciating. 

John’s eyes widen and he blinks in surprise. He is watching Sherlock’s eyes rake hungrily over him.

“You kissed me.” It is a petulant accusation. Sherlock really can’t be expected to hold back the floodgates when John said he ‘didn’t want to wait’ and kissed him. 

John’s smile is soft; amused, sad and aroused and, even after all these years, so complex that Sherlock has no idea how everyone doesn’t suspect that the soul within is thousands of years old.

“To be honest, I was just trying to get you to shut up,” John huffs a little laugh. “My head was throbbing with all the… yeah, I don't even know where to begin.” He is smiling but he looks lost. “You were making my head spin - past lives - immortality - I don’t know what it all means.” He is searching Sherlock’s face.

A flutter of panic breaks through the peaceful agony of arousal swathing Sherlock. 

_John is pulling away?_  
_Maybe, he doesn't want it at all?_  
_It's all falling apart._  
_He's going to lose John, **again.**_

“Means?” Sherlock repeats sharply, because this really is too much to bear. John can’t turn back now. “I explained this… _thoroughly._ You are obviously choosing not to understand - retreating into some feeble attempt at feigned ignorance-”

“No, don’t be like that.” John tips his chin forward so his bottom lip brushes firmly against the crease of Sherlock’s. 

Sherlock whimpers, words dying and anger instantly deflated as he is pulled under by that throb of need. 

“I know. I know how I feel about you. I have known for ages… but… can you just let me get my head around it a bit…” John looks off to the side at the wall of pictures and his face is lined with weariness, confusion and, perhaps, a trace of fear.

“You don't believe me.” Sherlock's voice has gone cold, his body stiff and his eyes narrowed. It's his own fault, really. This time around he'd tried so hard to spare John from dying on his behalf. He'd risked the truth of his immortality being exposed to die in his stead. That had been a horrendous miscalculation. Upon his return from trying to eliminate all threats to John, he'd found John broken and, so angry, and in love with someone else. So, in repentance, he'd tried to give John some semblance of that normal life he seemed to want this time around. He'd ignored his instincts and the pain in every fibre of his being and done everything he could to be a good friend and support him in having a wife and family for once. In the end, he'd only succeeded in hurting John terribly, putting him in more danger and growing doubt and mistrust in those unnatural cracks between them. 

“No, of course I do, Sherlock.” John's face has shifted into such a deep and profound sadness that it feels like a physical pain in Sherlock’s chest to witness it. “Christ, I never stopped believing in you. That's why it hurt so much when-” John breaks off and looks away, swallowing that ember of old pain. He takes a deep breath.

“You’re right. You’re right, I didn’t-” John interrupts himself by sinking into a kiss. In spite of Sherlock’s urgency, John takes the lead and, within a few seconds, it becomes slow and deep; a drugging sort of kiss that reminds Sherlock how good it can be when he relinquishes control and lets John take over. 

When John pulls back Sherlock’s eyes can only manage to part halfway. Every part of him is throbbing for John, but somehow the pain of it feels good, familiar, he knows John can quench it.

“John,” he growls sternly, prepared to use whatever means available to prod him to action. He is shamelessly wiggling and thrusting up against John's weight to encourage the abandoning of any remaining barriers. 

John’s mouth envelopes his again and Sherlock is lost in it. He kisses with lush, full presses, against Sherlock’s neck and up to his jaw, to that place just by his ear - the place he always finds himself rubbing with the distant memory of John’s kisses there from previous life cycles. Sherlock’s toes curl and he hums his approval. 

How does he know?  
How is this wonder-of-a-man always designed to be his greatest weakness?

When John pulls back again, they are both panting and Sherlock doesn’t even bother to try open his eyes. He feels sedated and floating just outside of himself; completely surrendered to John.

“Right,” John breathes softly. “That’s more like it.” 

John rests his forehead against Sherlock’s and their breath intermingles, ricocheting off each other’s lips with each harsh little pant. “I’m just - I'm not sure if we should… you know, get ahead of ourselves,” he whispers. “Not just yet.”

Sherlock's eyes snap open, alarm hardening into anger at being denied.

John looks back by at him steadily. “I just need… _time,_ Sherlock. Time to-”

“ _Time_ is one thing you _don't_ have, John,” Sherlock spits bitterly. He doesn't mean it to be so harsh but it is sharp and cutting. John sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly through his nose, face seeming to crumple beneath the deeper truth of those words. 

“I-” The pain swells in Sherlock's chest and he wants to take it back, to say something to fix it. All his years have only made him less skilled at this sort of thing. Instead of clarifying how best to communicate with people, it has only made him all too aware of the thousands of possibilities and always changing, unforeseeable variables that make it near miraculous that things ever turn out right. 

John saves him by reaching down and delicately tracing his cheek bone with his fingertips. Sherlock looks up into his eyes and sees Justus buried within them; the expression the same as in Sherlock's last moments; gazing down at him like he was something so precious and unbearably fragile and fleeting.

He presses his eyes closed and turns his face into the cup of John's hands. He presses kisses into his palm as he feels the burning tide of emotion rise, flooding his eyes.

“I - I just miss you,” he whispers into John's palm like an awful secret. “I know that doesn't make sense to you because, from your perspective, you can't miss something you've _never had,_ but I know… I know what we _can be_ and every day living without that-” Sherlock clamps his mouth shut, lips trembling, as he feels burning liquid cut paths down his cheek and drip onto the pillow below. It hurts so much. “You don't know,” he whispers, crushing his eyes closed tighter, whole body shaking as he tries to contain himself. 

There is silence for several long moments as they just try to breathe.

“No, I don't know what it's like for you.” John’s voice is quiet and thoughtful. He swipes his thumb gently through the wet trail on Sherlock's cheek. “But, I do feel it, Sherlock. That - that missing _something..._ Like a memory you just can't quite reach - can only feel the edges of it sometimes - just enough for you to know something isn’t there that should be... I feel the pull of you. Oh, god, I feel _so much_ for you and I’ve tried-” His voice breaks and he closes his eyes, tipping his chin to his chest.

“John.” Sherlock reaches up and cups his hand around the back of his neck as comfort and strength.

“Alright,” John nods, his hand slides along Sherlock's arm to grip his hand. He pulls it forward and kisses Sherlock's fingertips. “Slow, yeah?” John says softly, nodding. "However much time I have, I don't want to rush it. I just want to enjoy it - enjoy _you_ \- for as long as I can."

**Author's Note:**

>  **I appreciate you reading.  
> **  
>  Your kudos and commented keep me writing so, please, if you liked this, show the love.


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